A person may wish to use more than one display unit (a screen, a monitor, an LED display, etc.) to show a sequence of images (e.g. a movie, a presentation, a stock ticker, etc.). For example, many screens can be combined to show a movie at a larger size and better resolution than would be possible on any of the smaller screens alone. It may be difficult, however to achieve synchronization of the display units such that the combination of display units shows a single image at any point in time. The temporal synchronization across display units can be complicated by a number of factors. For example, the combination of display units may include a variety of types of hardware (television monitor, computer monitor, projector, etc.) and a variety of models from different manufacturers. A variety of cables or devices could be used to interconnect and communicate with the display units.
Information about the particular hardware set-up may help to optimize the synchronization of the image sequence across the display units. This information may be collected manually by a user, and entered into a computer through a user interface, for use by a display driver. The user may identify information about each kind of hardware device, and each interconnector. If the combination of display includes dozens or hundreds of devices, this process may become tedious and difficult to do by hand. The user may not be in the same physical location as the display units. For example, a display in multiple locations may be controlled by a central server, like broadcast of a sports event, and/or broadcast of a surgical operation to remote experts. Additionally, if there is a change in the hardware setup during display, (e.g. one of the display devices is removed or malfunctions, or a new display unit is added), the user would have to investigate the change and/or communicate information about the changed setup to the display driver. This manual process may cause an interruption in the display of the image sequence and cause mission-critical failure: for example, interrupting the play of a video game, losing important portions of a live broadcast event, and/or even threatening lives if there is an interruption of a display of a live surgery to physicians.